After a day where Dow stocks outshined tech, stocks are mellow in early trading. Crude oil is up a smidge, while bonds, precious metals, and the US dollar are mostly flat.
Today is meeting day – in France where the other G7 leaders and President Trump are gathered and in Washington where the Federal Reserve is gathering to hash out its monetary policy plans. The big focus in Europe, naturally, is the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding. A signing ceremony is scheduled for Friday in Geneva.
Iran will reportedly receive financial concessions in exchange for opening the Strait of Hormuz and agreeing to nuclear weapons-focused restrictions – while the US will end its naval blockade. Crude oil prices have been sliding for days, dropping 40% from their wartime peak, in anticipation of energy shipments picking up. The State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) has rebounded, too, with year-to-date gains now up to 10.3%.
USO, SPY (YTD % Change)
Data by YCharts
Meanwhile, the Fed is poised to hold rates steady in the current range of 3.5% to 3.75%. But new Chair Kevin Warsh may lay the groundwork for future hikes given elevated inflation pressures. The economy has held up well rather than cooled, market sentiment is bordering on exuberant, and central banks in Europe and Japan are already hiking rates in response.
Finally it’s time for ANOTHER acronym on Wall Street. Exit Mag 7, enter “MANGOS!” A pair of ETF sponsors are rolling out funds that track the four publicly traded MANGOS stocks and two private ones: Meta Platforms Inc. (META), Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), SpaceX (SPCX), Anthropic, and OpenAI.
Technically, the fund sponsored by Corgi Securities will also include other semiconductor and tech stocks. But either way, it’s another example of the popularity of thematic investing and opportunistic industry behavior in a bull market that keeps on running.
